Computer input devices

1.
 
Prepare a PPT presentation using the following information and 
additional sources. 
HISTORY OF WIKIPEDIA 
Wikipedia
 began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days 
after the domain was registered by 
Jimmy Wales
 and 
Larry Sanger
. Its 
technological and conceptual underpinnings predate this; the earliest 
known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by 
Rick Gates
 in 
1993, and the concept of a 
free-as-in-freedom
 online encyclopedia 
(as 
distinct
 from mere 
open source
) was proposed by 
Richard Stallman
 in 
December 2000.
Crucially, Stallman's concept specifically included the idea that no 
central organization should control editing. This characteristic greatly 
contrasted with contemporary digital encyclopedias such as 
Microsoft Encarta
, 
Encyclopædia 
Britannica
, and even 
Bomis
's 
Nupedia
, which was Wikipedia's direct predecessor. In 2001, the 
license for Nupedia was changed to 
GFDL
, and Wales and Sanger launched Wikipedia using the 
concept and technology of a 
wiki
 pioneered in 1995 by 
Ward Cunningham
. Initially, Wikipedia 
was intended to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia project edited solely by experts, 
by providing additional draft articles and ideas for it. In practice, Wikipedia quickly overtook 
Nupedia, becoming a global project in multiple languages and inspiring a wide range of 
other 
online reference projects
.  
According to 
Alexa Internet
, as of December 2019, Wikipedia is the world's ninth-most-
popular website in terms of what it terms global internet engagement. Wikipedia's worldwide 
monthly readership is approximately 495 million. Worldwide in September 2018, WMF Labs 
tallied 15.5 billion page views for the month. According to 
comScore
, Wikipedia receives over 
117 million monthly unique visitors from the United States alone.

---

The concept of compiling the world's knowledge in a single location dates back to the 
ancient 
Libraries of Alexandria
 and 
Pergamum
, but the modern concept of a general-purpose, 
widely distributed, printed 
encyclopedia
 originated with 
Denis Diderot
 and the 18th-century 
French 
encyclopedists
. The idea of using automated machinery beyond the 
printing press
 to 
build a more useful encyclopedia can be traced to 
Paul Otlet
's 1934 book Traité de 
documentation; Otlet also founded the 
Mundaneum
, an institution dedicated to indexing the 
world's knowledge, in 1910. This concept of a machine-assisted encyclopedia was further 
expanded in 
H. G. Wells
' book of essays 
World Brain
 (1938) and 
Vannevar Bush
's future vision 
of the 
microfilm
-based 
Memex
 in his essay "
As We May Think
" (1945). Another milestone 
was 
Ted Nelson
's 
hypertext
 design 
Project Xanadu
, which was begun in 1960.
Advances in information technology in the late 20th century led to changes in the form 
of encyclopedias. While previous encyclopedias, notably the 
Encyclopædia Britannica
, were 
book-based, Microsoft's 
Encarta
, published in 1993, was available on CD-ROM 
and 
hyperlinked
. The development of the 
World Wide Web
 led to many attempts to 
develop 
internet encyclopedia projects
. An early proposal for an online encyclopedia 
was 
Interpedia
 in 1993 by 
Rick Gates
; this project died before generating any encyclopedic 
content. 
Free software
 proponent 
Richard Stallman
 described the usefulness of a "Free Universal 
Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in 1999. His published document "aims to lay out what 
the free encyclopedia needs to do, what sort of freedoms it needs to give the public, and how we 
can get started on developing it." On Wednesday 17 January 2001, two days after the founding 
of Wikipedia, the 
Free Software Foundation
's (FSF) 
GNUPedia
 project went online, competing 
with 
Nupedia
, but today the FSF encourages people "to visit and contribute to [Wikipedia]"
Encyclopaedia Britannica, the world’s most 
famous set of reference books, has decided to stop 
printing its 32-volume collection. The decision ends 
a 244-year history of the iconic printed edition. 
Instead, it will focus on its online version and try to 
fend off competition from other webbased 
encyclopaedias. The company has recently launched 
a digital encyclopaedia for iPads and other tablet 
devices. Officials said the end of the physical books 
had been foreseen for many years, although they 
played down the impact of Internet sites. Britannica 
president Jorge Cauz said: “This has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google…This has to do 
with the fact that now Britannica sells its digital products to a large number of people.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica was first brought out in 1768 in Scotland. It moved its 
headquarters to Chicago in 1935. It sold door-to-door for generations, selling more than seven 
million sets. Sales plummeted with the advent of CD-ROM encyclopaedias and then the Internet. 
Web-based resources can be updated overnight, whereas it takes Britannica a decade to produce 
a new version. It was last printed in 2010 and there are still 4,000 sets left, selling for $1,395 
each. Mr Cauz admitted that: “In many instances doing a keyword search in an online resource 
is simply a lot faster then standing up looking at the index of the Britannica and then finding the 
appropriate volume.